


Earthly Attractions (the Bright as Day Remix)

by Phoebe_Zeitgeist



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Zeitgeist/pseuds/Phoebe_Zeitgeist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People do what books have taught them to do and feel what books have taught them to feel – it is curiously difficult to do otherwise.<sup>1</sup></p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthly Attractions (the Bright as Day Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Earthly Attractions](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/5502) by Mistressrenet. 



> Written for Remix Redux, 2006. Spoilers for the Kyoto Arc, in a vague and general kind of way.

Once upon a time there was a princess who was as beautiful as the day, and as kind as the sunlight. The tale of her beauty and her goodness spread, and men came from far and wide to seek her hand in marriage.

Or maybe she was a peasant girl, the flower of the land. It doesn't matter, it's still the same story.

She could hardly marry all of them, and her father was unwilling to simply choose the wealthiest for her. (Perhaps he worried about making enemies of the others. Or perhaps he had promised his daughter that she could choose her own husband.) So he - or the princess herself, for she had the wisdom of the heart, for all her innocence - set the noblest of the suitors a quest. Each was to find and bring her a treasure, and she would marry the one who offered her the treasure worthiest to be her wedding gift.

We suit the story well enough, the four of us. Tsuzuki is beautiful and kind as the princess should be, and as innocent. And we his suitors are appropriately princely: Kurosaki is the heir of a noble family, and my mother was of royal blood. Even Muraki: in the paternal line the Murakis are jumped-up servants, but his mother was as royal as mine, albeit less human.

We brought him our gifts, in Kyoto, and all of them were death. Muraki brought delirium and transformation, and if Tsuzuki refused it, he recognized it as a gift of love. I brought release, and obedience to his will. Kurosaki brought love beyond death, and the willingness to burn, and that was the right gift, the one Tsuzuki chose. (We might all have known. It's always the youngest who gets it right.)

The story tells of the triumphant return of the youngest suitor, whose gift means love, and it tells of the joy in the kingdom at the princess's happiness. There has been joy, and if Tsuzuki's happiness was a tender shoot at first, it has grown and thrived.

The story doesn't tell what happened to the other two suitors.

Nor should it. They have no stories of their own. It is right that Muraki is gone. Just as it is right that I will be gone tomorrow.

It's as well to have the date set. I could linger here endlessly, finding details to require my attention, drawing things out. What else have I been doing these past months? I have told myself that it would be irresponsible of me to leave them without a balanced budget, one that will be flexible enough to adjust to various contingencies and still keep them solvent through the next fiscal year. (If they can be made to adhere to it, at any rate, a thing my successor may find difficult.) Without a date set, I might have once again allowed the daily demands of the office to push that goal into the indefinite future. As it is, unless I discover some new mistake in my revenue forecasts, the work will be done tonight.

I check the clock and find it's after seven. The budget will be done tonight, then, but not until late tonight. That's as well too. I have thought my decision through, and no purpose would be served by reexamining it, as I could not avoid doing if I were faced with empty hours between now and the time of my departure. Even we shinigami know little enough about what awaits us when we move on at last, so that all our thoughts in these last hours must be for what we will leave, without any leavening of happy anticipation for where we may arrive. It may be that this is a final test of our readiness to move on, that we must do it thus, walking away from our old lives, and not toward our new ones.

If it is a test, I will pass it. With Tsuzuki settled and the office sufficiently organized and budgeted to function, I will have finished with all I set out to do here. After tomorrow, I would be twice a ghost in this place.

There's a knock at my door. I look up to see it already swinging open, so that I know who my visitor is even before I see the lab coat, the owl, the flash of gilded hair. Only Watari knocks at my door and then opens it uninvited. (Tsuzuki not only opens it uninvited but comes through it as well, and he does not remember to knock. The others knock, and wait for an answer.)

As always he pauses in the door, leaning against the frame. As always, 003 chooses a strand of his hair and begins to chew on it, something he never seems to notice. "Perhaps you need a break?" he says.

"Not yet," I tell him, gesturing at the piles of paper. It would be pleasant to take that break, to observe our informal ritual of late-night tea and minor office gossip on this, my last night here. But this is early for him to have come by, and he'll still be here a couple of hours from now. Watari does not keep longer hours than I do, but he keeps later ones.

To my surprise he shakes his head. "You shouldn't be in the office this late the night before you retire," he tells me. "You should be celebrating. Shouldn't you?"

I feel my entire body tense. For an instant, before I can control it, all the shadows in the room shiver. "What are you talking about?"

"I built these computers, Tatsumi. You think you can fool me?" He shakes his head and walks the rest of the way into my office. "I understand not wanting a fuss made, but this is ridiculous. You should get out of here. Come on. Have dinner with me."

I look again at my work. "You don't want to order out?" I ask. I think I would like that. It too is a ritual of sorts between us, and it would be satisfying to include it in my last hours here.

"No, I do not," he says, pronouncing each word very precisely for emphasis. "I want to take you to the Italian restaurant I've been telling you about for at least the last two years, that you say you don't have time for and are actually avoiding because you're afraid it'll be expensive. This is my last chance to do it, and you have all tomorrow to finish the paperwork. Don't even try to tell me you're too busy."

 

* * *

 

At dinner he says, "Can I ask you, why now?"

I suppose the question was inevitable. We have always respected each other's privacy, but we have been friends, perhaps closer friends than any other two people in the Summons Division. I have been closer to him, certainly, than I ever was to Tsuzuki. (But that's a false comparison, for whatever Tsuzuki and I have been to each other, we were not friends.) He has been generous in pretending that he was unaware of my decision, in not prying. He has a right to ask, and to be answered.

But I find I am not sure how to answer him. "I just..." I could tell him the tale, but what sense would it make to him? He is a scientist, a man of reason and purpose for all his eccentricities: his world is cause and effect, not myth. "I don't feel there's anything left." Kyoto was an ending, and maybe there's another way to explain that, but I do not want to talk about Kyoto. Not here, not to Watari, not tonight. "I'm ready to move on to whatever's next." If he knows that's merely what you're expected to say at the exit interview, and he probably does, he makes no sign. But I can feel the intensity of his gaze on me, bright and neutral, almost predatory, strangely like the gaze of his owl.

He nods a little in acknowledgement. "I knew it was a mistake to let you get the budget under control," he mutters darkly. He meets my eyes, serious once more. "I . . . we'll miss you."

"I know." It seems unkind to deny it. But they won't, or not for long. I belong to that other time, the time before Kyoto; I have no place in the story of what comes next. "I'll miss you, too. If I can. I don't know that I'll be able to. I don't know what we carry with us." It's unpleasant to dwell on that, and I had wanted to avoid doing so. They have been so important to me, for so long. "I hope I can. You've been good friends to me, through all these years."

"Do you?" His gaze does not falter, and I find I have to look away from it. "Well then." His voice has changed, and I look back to see him grinning. "We should make tonight as memorable as possible, shouldn't we? To lengthen the odds?" He dips a finger into the plate of cream sauce in front of him, lifts it to his mouth, and begins licking it off with long slow strokes of his tongue, his eyes never leaving mine.

I could almost laugh. It's not subtle, but why should it be? If I wanted to be difficult, I could turn his own question back on him, and ask, _why now?_ But I know the answer: we're strangers now, chance-met on a journey. Our roads run together only through tomorrow. A week ago, a year ago, and the sense of this possibility between us would have remained an unspoken private joke: a thing we were both aware of, and that we both knew to be like the locked room the new bride discovers in her much-married husband's house: never to be opened, or at least, never to be opened by anyone sensible. Any fool knows that disaster lies behind that door. Now, there will be no consequences. It is safe for him to offer, safe for me to accept.

So instead of questioning I smile, and let him see the way I watch him, and let him feed me tidbits from his plate. When my fingers brush against his wrist, I feel the shudder go all through his body.

He insists upon paying, even though we both know I will have no use for my money after tomorrow; insists, as we both expected, upon walking me home. I find I am glad of it. Even through the long years of my hopes of Tsuzuki, I was always aware of Watari's attractiveness. His intelligence, his manic energy, his startling comfort in his own skin: he has always been the most alive of any of us: more alive, I think, than many of those whose candles still burn in the Castle. We have flirted off and on over the years, but never seriously; a quiet acknowledgment of the other's attractiveness and little more. And yet the attraction was there. The flirtation never ended. Perhaps there was one last thing I had left undone, after all.

* * *

I wake up and realize my arm is around the pillow, embracing someone who is no longer there. My bedside clock reads four-fifty a.m. I look for Watari.

He is across the room, leaning into the window frame, his glasses off, staring out the window. I can see the light on his face, but not clearly enough to read his expression. His hair is pale in the new light, the white-gold of the first pale shoots of narcissus showing through the earth in early spring.

I know he will not ask me to stay.

I go and stand behind him, gathering him into my arms. He does not resist, although it is long minutes before he turns to me and buries his face against my shoulder. I cannot tell how long we stand there — it could be seconds, or centuries — before he relaxes against me. I lead us back into bed and hold him, stroking his hair, until he falls asleep again, his breathing calm and steady.

I watch him for a few minutes more, all I can afford, and force myself into the shower. He'll still be asleep when I go into work. It will be better for both of us, this way.

* * *

It's ten-thirty when I venture out of the office for coffee. Kurosaki regards me coldly. "In my capacity as informal intraoffice messaging system, I should inform you that Watari-san is upset," he says. _It's about you, and I know more than either of us would like me to_ , his glare adds, as if there was some way I could have forgotten he is an empath. His attitude grates on my nerves. He is the hero of his own story, and of ours; we all know it. It is impossible to think that he could see himself as merely a carrier of the messages we will not speak aloud, a convenient plot device, a go-between in other people's stories. And yet, why would he pretend?

The thought is a distraction, and I put it aside. Watari is upset, and perhaps he has a right to be, and I do not want Watari upset. I want — I shove that thought aside too.

"Thank you. I'll talk to him."

Kurosaki nods, and his glare softens fractionally. "Good."

We are interrupted by an explosion. "I'll do it now," I add.

I walk to the lab-- no need to rush, lab explosions are nothing new in EnMaCho, after all-- and find Watari standing, lips pursed thoughtfully, in the midst of the smoking wreckage. I take a look around and do a few calculations: I have a few replacement countertops left in storage, and that was one of the cheaper Bunsen burners. However, the puddle of plastic, metal, and glass that was once Watari's favorite microscope will cost at least 250,000 yen to replace, and that was the last of the chairs. So much for my balanced budget.

I look back to Watari. I hardly needed an empath to tell me that he is upset. His distress is visible, obvious. It's a surprise to realize that if I knew Watari less well I might miss the tension in the way he holds himself, the new uncertainty between us. Just as I might miss the challenge in the look he gives me, and the humor underneath it even now.

Just as I might miss his intensity of focus, which I have often seen him bring to a running experiment, but never to its wrecked aftermath.

Watari is a man of science, but perhaps he too tells stories. What else is an experiment, in the end?

I meet his eye. "This was . . . unnecessary," I tell him.

He does not pretend to misunderstand. "I had a hypothesis," he says. "It was worth testing."

"That I would stay until the budget was balanced, no matter what?"

But Watari is shaking his head. "No, the budget just makes a useful design for an experiment. The hypothesis is broader. You're not ready to leave. I'm always blowing up the lab. I'll do it after you're gone. You're not a fool, you know that. If you were ready to go, this wouldn't matter."

It's a fair point, and not just about the disaster all around us. "Your initial study was sufficient to confirm your hypothesis," I hear myself say. "And much less costly."

"But I had no access to the data from that study until approximately three minutes ago," he says. His voice is very dry, but I can see the tension in his body ease. "If the results had been available earlier, I might have reconsidered the need for further experimental work. As for expense. . . " He looks around once more. "You didn't see the restaurant bill. . . . I did ask for a new chair in my last budget."

"And I denied the request."

His grin is wicked. "I need one now."

"So you do," I say, surveying the ruins. "So you do."

* * *

Once upon a time there was a princess who was given a poisoned apple. She knew she should be wary, but it shone so beautifully, and its scent was so rich, that she at last took a bite of it. Such was the power of that apple (for it had been poisoned by magic) that she died the moment that bit of apple reached her throat.

She died, but the magic that had killed her preserved her, and all around her. Time was still in her castle, but it flowed on elsewhere, and the thorns grew high around her walls, until thorns were all a passer-by might see. Years went by, and maybe centuries. Then one day an adventurer passed by and saw the thorns, and wondered what they hid. The way was long and difficult, but at last he found a way through them, being both creative and willing to experiment, and not overly deterred by initial failures.

Inside, he found the princess. She was, as I have said, well-preserved, perhaps so well-preserved that she had never quite realized that she was dead. Being an educated man, and adventurous, he kissed her. His kiss dislodged the bit of poisoned apple from her throat, and her eyes cleared, and she looked all around her with wonder.

I think the adventurer's hair was blond. (It usually is.) I think perhaps he had an owl with him.

* * *

"Konoe-san?"

He looks up. "Yes, Tatsumi?"

"If it's possible, I would like to rescind my resignation. I know a replacement for my position has not been named--"

"Accepted," Konoe says, interrupting me. "There is no possible replacement, and you know it. Thank you for reconsidering."

You can't always choose how a story ends, but sometimes you can choose a different story.

I'm almost out of Konoe's office when I hear him add, "I am so glad, Tatsumi."

**Author's Note:**

> 1Sarah Caudwell, _The Sirens Sang Of Murder_


End file.
